On the eve of its 100th anniversary, the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires packed up tons of equipment and scenery, several hundred performers and a swarm of technicians, and deposited the entire load in Mexico City's Auditorio Nacional for a four-day run of Turandot, beginning tonight.
No small feat, even for one of the world's great opera houses. In fact everything about this production of Puccini's gorgeously gloomy posthumous tragedy, originally performed in an outdoor stadium last fall (Argentina's spring), is outsized. That includes the cavernous auditorium itself, big enough to hold several Bellas Artes theaters. Intimacy will necessarily yield to spectacle.
The singers, for example, will have to be miked, but that’s an impurity that doesn't seem to bother those involved with the production. "The demand on the singers is exactly the same," says artistic director Marcelo Lombardero. "They'll be singing just as if they were in a theater."
It's the sound technicians, not the singers, who have the most work to do. One task is getting the words heard in the back rows without overdoing the amplification. "We have to find the level that's most like the natural human voice," Lombardero says. "It's not going to be the same as it would be for Iron Maiden."
For José Luis Duval, the Guanajuato-born tenor with the lead male role, being miked is the least of the performers' problems. "We're doing four Turandots in four days, so we need to stay healthy and rested," he says. "Most of us came up from sea-level cities in Argentina and Italy to Mexico City, with its contamination and altitude. That's a much bigger challenge than two little cords pinned on our clothes."
The cast and crew is mostly Argentinean, but the two leads are not. Duval is Mexican, and soprano Cynthia Makris, who plays the Chinese princess Turandot, is American. So is musical director Stefan Lano, who has been with the Teatro Colón for 15 years, as a guest conductor and then musical director. He's also working in Mexico on a project of Argentine Criollo music to be performed at Bellas Artes later in the year.
Lano has conducted for the San Francisco Opera and the New York Met, but he's just as happy working in Latin America, thank you. "They're not quite as judgmental, not quite as prejudicial," he says. "In the United States I've had agents telling me I need to let my hair grow so my image would be more like a conductor."
That would be a shame. Lano keeps what's left of his hair cropped down to near-nothing, and with his sharp-featured long face and unignorable glasses, he's a younger version of Paul's grandfather in Hard Day's Night, if Paul's grandfather could conduct Wozzeck, Salomé, Bomarzo and Jonny Spielt Auf.
Lano isn't a big fan of the simultaneous translation from Italian into Spanish that will be seen on a video screen during the Turandot performances, but accepts its appeal to the public. "I'd prefer it if the whole world were polyglot," he says. "Musicians generally have an ear for languages, and I pride myself on speaking many languages poorly."
Truth is, Lano's Spanish is very good — confident and fluid, with Argentine coloring and a hint of the Boston Brahmin. He's put it to good use.
"I walk around Mexico City a lot and talk to people, and they are just lovely," he says. "From what you read in the U.S. press or the sound bites you hear on MSNBC or CNN, you'd never believe there's a country of such high culture across the border."
Given the Teatro Colón's track record, I can comfortably recommend this Turandot, sight unseen, for those who live in Mexico City or will be visiting in the next several days. The performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday are not sold out as of this writing, and there's talk of a fifth date on Sunday if the demand is there. Tickets are available at the usual places — Mix-Up, Liverpool, the Auditorio Nacional box office, and Ticketmaster (55 5325 9000 or www.ticketmaster.com).
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Capital Account: Full speed ahead
The Ebrard administration's recent "Green Consultation," which arranged for Mexico City residents to vote on 10 city proposals for improving the environment, has been criticized as a window-dressing exercise aimed only at manufacturing support for projects already roaring down the tracks.
To which the only reasonable response is — so what if it was?
The news value here is that a Mexico City mayor is finally trying to do something about the capital's unlivable condition. None of the previous city administrations, including recent PRD governments, paid much attention to the environment, beyond mouthing the obligatory homages and presiding over feel-good events. Ebrard is actually changing priorities, and trying new approaches.
But even the baby steps he's proposing will face opposition from the Calderón administration, which still has purse string and limited administrative powers over the Federal District. The feds are already blocking a debt-restructuring plan that would finance a laundry list of proposed D.F. reforms, as the PAN continues the same strategy it used during the D.F. mayor vote in 2006 — painting the PRD as fiscally irresponsible in its management of the capital.
The sniffiness between Marcelo Ebrard and Felipe Calderón would exist under any conditions. The PAN doesn't want to go on forever ceding the DF vote to the PRD, and will naturally do its best to prevent its rival from getting credit for governing well.
But fertilizing the ill will is Ebrard's refusal to publicly recognize Calderón as president, even declining to appear with him or have their picture taken together. As the world knows, most of the PRD and its supporters are convinced that Calderón's 2006 victory was tainted, to put it mildly. Ebrard, unlike fellow PRD governors in Zacatecas, Michoacán and other states, has stuck to the strategy of denying Calderón's legitimacy. He has the local popularity to get away with it.
In a practical sense, the issue is silly. Other than missed photo-ops, nothing official is done differently as a result of Ebrard not "recognizing" Calderón, whatever that means. It's a statement of principle, a posture. It has no procedural effect.
But the Calderón administration’s capacity to undermine Ebrard's environmental reforms, or any other project for that matter, is very real. Given the palpable antagonism, Ebrard can be forgiven his little dog and pony show in the form of a "Green Consultation." Whatever helps get the job done . . .
Predictably, seven of the 10 ideas got 90+ percent approval from the "voters." One proposal, to make it official policy to target transportation funds toward mass transit (Metro, Metrobus, bus system) rather than automobiles, fell just short at 88 percent approval.
The 90+ percenters were:
* Replacing all existing microbuses with newer and more efficient vehicles.
* Requiring all new buildings to include green spaces with trees on the rooftops.
* Obligating all taxis to use clean alternative fuels or hybrid cars.
* Upping the penalty for building illegally in protected areas or destroying forest land.
* Restricting the routes and hours of large cargo trucks passing through the city.
* Constructing 500 absorption wells to capture and treat rainwater that would otherwise be lost among the sewage runoff.
* Overhauling the garbage collection system by creating a central authority.
It should come as no surprise that the two proposals that went over poorly were the only two that would demand personal sacrifices. One would require all vehicles not to circulate one Saturday each month. The other would make school bus use obligatory for public school students. Those two ideas received 74 percent and 66 percent approval ratings respectively. Given the stacked nature of the poll, that victory margin amounts to a defeat.
To which the only reasonable response is — so what if it was?
The news value here is that a Mexico City mayor is finally trying to do something about the capital's unlivable condition. None of the previous city administrations, including recent PRD governments, paid much attention to the environment, beyond mouthing the obligatory homages and presiding over feel-good events. Ebrard is actually changing priorities, and trying new approaches.
But even the baby steps he's proposing will face opposition from the Calderón administration, which still has purse string and limited administrative powers over the Federal District. The feds are already blocking a debt-restructuring plan that would finance a laundry list of proposed D.F. reforms, as the PAN continues the same strategy it used during the D.F. mayor vote in 2006 — painting the PRD as fiscally irresponsible in its management of the capital.
The sniffiness between Marcelo Ebrard and Felipe Calderón would exist under any conditions. The PAN doesn't want to go on forever ceding the DF vote to the PRD, and will naturally do its best to prevent its rival from getting credit for governing well.
But fertilizing the ill will is Ebrard's refusal to publicly recognize Calderón as president, even declining to appear with him or have their picture taken together. As the world knows, most of the PRD and its supporters are convinced that Calderón's 2006 victory was tainted, to put it mildly. Ebrard, unlike fellow PRD governors in Zacatecas, Michoacán and other states, has stuck to the strategy of denying Calderón's legitimacy. He has the local popularity to get away with it.
In a practical sense, the issue is silly. Other than missed photo-ops, nothing official is done differently as a result of Ebrard not "recognizing" Calderón, whatever that means. It's a statement of principle, a posture. It has no procedural effect.
But the Calderón administration’s capacity to undermine Ebrard's environmental reforms, or any other project for that matter, is very real. Given the palpable antagonism, Ebrard can be forgiven his little dog and pony show in the form of a "Green Consultation." Whatever helps get the job done . . .
Predictably, seven of the 10 ideas got 90+ percent approval from the "voters." One proposal, to make it official policy to target transportation funds toward mass transit (Metro, Metrobus, bus system) rather than automobiles, fell just short at 88 percent approval.
The 90+ percenters were:
* Replacing all existing microbuses with newer and more efficient vehicles.
* Requiring all new buildings to include green spaces with trees on the rooftops.
* Obligating all taxis to use clean alternative fuels or hybrid cars.
* Upping the penalty for building illegally in protected areas or destroying forest land.
* Restricting the routes and hours of large cargo trucks passing through the city.
* Constructing 500 absorption wells to capture and treat rainwater that would otherwise be lost among the sewage runoff.
* Overhauling the garbage collection system by creating a central authority.
It should come as no surprise that the two proposals that went over poorly were the only two that would demand personal sacrifices. One would require all vehicles not to circulate one Saturday each month. The other would make school bus use obligatory for public school students. Those two ideas received 74 percent and 66 percent approval ratings respectively. Given the stacked nature of the poll, that victory margin amounts to a defeat.
Commentary: School for Scandal
There are lots of losers coming out of last week's Baja California gubernatorial election.
One is the foreign press, who can no longer punch up their prose courtesy of a billionaire gambling tycoon with questionable ties, an apparent history of exotic-animal smuggling, an unmistakable stench of corruption, and a penchant for quaffing liquid blends of animal members, rattlesnakes, scorpions and other protein sources.
Another is Jorge Hank Rhon himself, scion of a once-feared political clan whose patriarch, the late Carlos Hank González, famously summarized seven decades of PRI rule with the immortal words: "A politician who is poor is a poor politician." Jorge Hank managed to ride his own wealth, abundant connections and intimidating presence to the top of Tijuana's municipal government, but fell a full 7 percentage points short of the Baja California governorship on August 5.
A third loser is Roberto Madrazo, the Godfather-voiced PRI dinosaur whose personal political career ended on July 2, 2006 with his party's disastrous election performance. Madrazo was singularly responsible for the calamity, first as party head and then as presidential candidate. Now even a behind-the-scenes role seems out of his reach, given that his gallo, Jorge Hank, with whom the fatherless Madrazo literally grew up, has gone down.
Even before the 2006 debacle, Madrazo had promoted Jorge's brother Carlos Hank for the PRI candidacy in the 2005 State of Mexico governor's race. He struck out there as well when outgoing governor Arturo Montiel managed to secure the nomination for his protégé Enrique Peña Nieto. Thanks to an embarrassingly incompetent campaign by PAN candidate Rubén Mendoza Ayala, and an unseemly personal smearing of the PRD's Yeidckol Palevnsky, Peña Nieto won handily. His name frequently comes up now as a likely presidential candidate in 2012, an election that the PRI, despite everything, may be in a very good position to win.
Yet another loser: The good people of Baja California, who were subjected to another idea-free farce of an election. Hank used his residual control of the Tijuana police department to prevent PAN get-out-the-voters from operating in that largest of BC cities, while the PAN, in the words of one prominent public opinion analyst, waged a campaign that "was heavy-handed enough to have possibly crossed some electoral law lines."
Governor-elect José Guadalupe Osuna Millán was also able to use the preferred PAN technique of emphasizing security and his rival's threat to it. Unlike the Calderón 2006 presidential campaign, however, he didn't have to resort to lies about his opponent in order to stoke the fear. All he had to do was let Hank be Hank.
The big winner? No contest. It's Elba Esther Gordillo, the Dragon Lady of caricatures and head of the huge teachers union who recently had herself appointed leader for life (or, as later "clarified" under pressure, until 2012, whichever comes first). After splitting from the PRI over a nasty feud with Madrazo, Gordillo threw her weight behind Calderón in 2006. Given his miniscule margin of victory, hers was no small contribution, and she hasn't been shy about calling in her chits with the new president ever since.
Gordillo worked behind the scenes for Osuna in Baja California, inspired perhaps not just by her new pro-PAN leanings but also by another chance to hurt Madrazo, via Hank. In the final days of the campaign, when it looked likely that Osuna would win, Gordillo flexed her muscles and went off on Calderón's education secretary, Josefina Vázquez Mota. "Josefina doesn't know anything about education," Gordillo told El Universal. "The only one who knows is me."
That sounded for all the world like an open challenge, implying that Gordillo expects to be Calderón's top education adviser, officially or unofficially. The irony behind the gambit is that the quality of Mexican public education is notoriously poor not because of finances (per capita education spending in Mexico is well above the Latin American average) but precisely because of the attitude of the union-controlled teachers.
"Time and again they oppose new textbooks, different content, program changes, or pedagogic innovations," writes Sara Sefchovich, an author and sociologist. "The union and the bureaucracy are the principal obstacle to improving education in this country."
Elba Esther's bold, unelected claim to power doesn't make Calderón look good. It's one thing for him to be seen as beholden to the nation's big business interests; he is, after all, ideologically pledged to support them. But to appear in thrall to an openly manipulative union boss is retro at best, and threatens to confirm many of the accusations of Calderón's political enemies. The president would do well to tell Gordillo where to get off, but don't count on it happening. For my money Vázquez Mota herself is more likely to do it than he is.
One is the foreign press, who can no longer punch up their prose courtesy of a billionaire gambling tycoon with questionable ties, an apparent history of exotic-animal smuggling, an unmistakable stench of corruption, and a penchant for quaffing liquid blends of animal members, rattlesnakes, scorpions and other protein sources.
Another is Jorge Hank Rhon himself, scion of a once-feared political clan whose patriarch, the late Carlos Hank González, famously summarized seven decades of PRI rule with the immortal words: "A politician who is poor is a poor politician." Jorge Hank managed to ride his own wealth, abundant connections and intimidating presence to the top of Tijuana's municipal government, but fell a full 7 percentage points short of the Baja California governorship on August 5.
A third loser is Roberto Madrazo, the Godfather-voiced PRI dinosaur whose personal political career ended on July 2, 2006 with his party's disastrous election performance. Madrazo was singularly responsible for the calamity, first as party head and then as presidential candidate. Now even a behind-the-scenes role seems out of his reach, given that his gallo, Jorge Hank, with whom the fatherless Madrazo literally grew up, has gone down.
Even before the 2006 debacle, Madrazo had promoted Jorge's brother Carlos Hank for the PRI candidacy in the 2005 State of Mexico governor's race. He struck out there as well when outgoing governor Arturo Montiel managed to secure the nomination for his protégé Enrique Peña Nieto. Thanks to an embarrassingly incompetent campaign by PAN candidate Rubén Mendoza Ayala, and an unseemly personal smearing of the PRD's Yeidckol Palevnsky, Peña Nieto won handily. His name frequently comes up now as a likely presidential candidate in 2012, an election that the PRI, despite everything, may be in a very good position to win.
Yet another loser: The good people of Baja California, who were subjected to another idea-free farce of an election. Hank used his residual control of the Tijuana police department to prevent PAN get-out-the-voters from operating in that largest of BC cities, while the PAN, in the words of one prominent public opinion analyst, waged a campaign that "was heavy-handed enough to have possibly crossed some electoral law lines."
Governor-elect José Guadalupe Osuna Millán was also able to use the preferred PAN technique of emphasizing security and his rival's threat to it. Unlike the Calderón 2006 presidential campaign, however, he didn't have to resort to lies about his opponent in order to stoke the fear. All he had to do was let Hank be Hank.
The big winner? No contest. It's Elba Esther Gordillo, the Dragon Lady of caricatures and head of the huge teachers union who recently had herself appointed leader for life (or, as later "clarified" under pressure, until 2012, whichever comes first). After splitting from the PRI over a nasty feud with Madrazo, Gordillo threw her weight behind Calderón in 2006. Given his miniscule margin of victory, hers was no small contribution, and she hasn't been shy about calling in her chits with the new president ever since.
Gordillo worked behind the scenes for Osuna in Baja California, inspired perhaps not just by her new pro-PAN leanings but also by another chance to hurt Madrazo, via Hank. In the final days of the campaign, when it looked likely that Osuna would win, Gordillo flexed her muscles and went off on Calderón's education secretary, Josefina Vázquez Mota. "Josefina doesn't know anything about education," Gordillo told El Universal. "The only one who knows is me."
That sounded for all the world like an open challenge, implying that Gordillo expects to be Calderón's top education adviser, officially or unofficially. The irony behind the gambit is that the quality of Mexican public education is notoriously poor not because of finances (per capita education spending in Mexico is well above the Latin American average) but precisely because of the attitude of the union-controlled teachers.
"Time and again they oppose new textbooks, different content, program changes, or pedagogic innovations," writes Sara Sefchovich, an author and sociologist. "The union and the bureaucracy are the principal obstacle to improving education in this country."
Elba Esther's bold, unelected claim to power doesn't make Calderón look good. It's one thing for him to be seen as beholden to the nation's big business interests; he is, after all, ideologically pledged to support them. But to appear in thrall to an openly manipulative union boss is retro at best, and threatens to confirm many of the accusations of Calderón's political enemies. The president would do well to tell Gordillo where to get off, but don't count on it happening. For my money Vázquez Mota herself is more likely to do it than he is.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Arts & Minds: Unreal Catorce
José Cruz has been writing and singing powerfully subtle lyrics for the group Real de Catorce for more than two decades, setting them to music at once familiar for its bluesiness yet strikingly original. He's a co-equal member of the latter-day triumvirate of exceptionally talented Mexican urban poets who deliver their goods from a blues base, a folk tradition, and a rock 'n' roll soul. The other two are Jaime López (who at age fiftysomething seems to be exploring ever more fruitful territory, sounding better than ever in the process), and Rodrigo González (who died tragically in the 1985 earthquake).
But something is wrong. It was evident a year ago when Real de Catorce opened a Mexico City Jazz Festival evening at the Metropolitan Theater for Buddy Guy, one of the last remaining electric blues masters from the old school. Cruz looked distracted, didn't sing well, and never really connected with the crowd. Worse, the current bassist and lead guitarist (the line-up behind Cruz, save for drummer Fernando Abrego, has shifted over the years) hopped around and rockstar-postured like the commercial pop band Real de Catorce had spent 22 years not being. Guitarist Julio Zea took over much of the between-song banter in embarrassing "Hello, Mexico City! We love you!" style. (To be fair, he didn't actually use that cliché, only appropriated its spirit. But he did go out of his way to praise the corporate sponsor of the event, something Cruz would never do.)
It turns out Cruz, at age 52, has multiple sclerosis. He appears in a wheelchair in recent newspaper photos (of which there are not many, since Real de Catorce has always performed below the mainstream media radar). It also turns out that Cruz and the band parted ways not long after that ill fated May 2006 concert, and far from amicably. Cruz now refers to his former musicians as "my ex-friends" and the band members themselves have posted on the Real de Catorce web site (from which Cruz has been banned) a lengthy manifesto accusing him of manipulative behavior, among many other things.
The situation is sad, for Cruz and his loved ones personally, and for the rest of us musically. A 22-year-run of exceptional music that most of the world was never aware of appears to be at an end. Cruz has made some solo appearances, and he's also authored a book of poetry (the translated title would be "From the Alcohol Texts"). But what kind of new career he can put together in his condition is unclear.
Incredibly, the other band members have taken over the name Real de Catorce, and promote themselves as such. This is not unlike Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg and the rest of the E Street Band separating from the Boss and calling themselves "Bruce Springsteen." Real de Catorce is José Cruz and vice versa. Zea, Abrego and bassist Neftalí López Nava have every right to carry on, and they'll no doubt put together something very good. But they need to do the right thing by forging their own identity and coming up with their own name. How about Real de Quince?
Meanwhile, Cruz and the cumulative membership of Real de Catorce have left us about a dozen CDs, some more compelling than others, but all superb. For the uninitiated, I suggest finding Voces Interiores (1992) as your introduction, for no better reason than it's my personal favorite. It includes "Pago mi renta con un poco de blues," a talking blues with an unexpected chorus, which along with "Azul" (a mournful slow blues with the honor of being the first cut on the first, self-named 1987 album) is the closest thing Real de Catorce ever had to a hit.
But something is wrong. It was evident a year ago when Real de Catorce opened a Mexico City Jazz Festival evening at the Metropolitan Theater for Buddy Guy, one of the last remaining electric blues masters from the old school. Cruz looked distracted, didn't sing well, and never really connected with the crowd. Worse, the current bassist and lead guitarist (the line-up behind Cruz, save for drummer Fernando Abrego, has shifted over the years) hopped around and rockstar-postured like the commercial pop band Real de Catorce had spent 22 years not being. Guitarist Julio Zea took over much of the between-song banter in embarrassing "Hello, Mexico City! We love you!" style. (To be fair, he didn't actually use that cliché, only appropriated its spirit. But he did go out of his way to praise the corporate sponsor of the event, something Cruz would never do.)
It turns out Cruz, at age 52, has multiple sclerosis. He appears in a wheelchair in recent newspaper photos (of which there are not many, since Real de Catorce has always performed below the mainstream media radar). It also turns out that Cruz and the band parted ways not long after that ill fated May 2006 concert, and far from amicably. Cruz now refers to his former musicians as "my ex-friends" and the band members themselves have posted on the Real de Catorce web site (from which Cruz has been banned) a lengthy manifesto accusing him of manipulative behavior, among many other things.
The situation is sad, for Cruz and his loved ones personally, and for the rest of us musically. A 22-year-run of exceptional music that most of the world was never aware of appears to be at an end. Cruz has made some solo appearances, and he's also authored a book of poetry (the translated title would be "From the Alcohol Texts"). But what kind of new career he can put together in his condition is unclear.
Incredibly, the other band members have taken over the name Real de Catorce, and promote themselves as such. This is not unlike Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg and the rest of the E Street Band separating from the Boss and calling themselves "Bruce Springsteen." Real de Catorce is José Cruz and vice versa. Zea, Abrego and bassist Neftalí López Nava have every right to carry on, and they'll no doubt put together something very good. But they need to do the right thing by forging their own identity and coming up with their own name. How about Real de Quince?
Meanwhile, Cruz and the cumulative membership of Real de Catorce have left us about a dozen CDs, some more compelling than others, but all superb. For the uninitiated, I suggest finding Voces Interiores (1992) as your introduction, for no better reason than it's my personal favorite. It includes "Pago mi renta con un poco de blues," a talking blues with an unexpected chorus, which along with "Azul" (a mournful slow blues with the honor of being the first cut on the first, self-named 1987 album) is the closest thing Real de Catorce ever had to a hit.
Between Us: The (very) local News
Extended vacations energize, they say, returning you to the real world with a renewed sense of purpose. But it's a rough transition for journalist-types. Spend a few weeks focusing on flora and fauna, music and painting, roads and sidewalks, people and places, and somehow making sense of the vagaries of the political class and the media that feeds off it doesn't feel like such a noble pursuit. But somebody has to do it, so onward. Starting with . . .
WHO'LL GET IT? We've all been assuming that the new incarnation of The News, as of now slated for a September resurrection, will serve readers of English across the nation. All indications, though, point to a strictly Mexico City circulation. Remember, the new News won't have Novedades to piggyback on for distribution. But the non-national availability, if that turns out to be the case, may also reflect a business bias I've heard often over the years. The bias, essentially, is that bringing a capital-based English-language paper to the provinces is a waste of time and effort. San Miguel residents, the thinking goes, are bohemians who don't buy much. Anglophones in Oaxaca are a bunch of hippies who buy even less. Expats in Ajijic and Lake Chapala are isolationists who don't want to read about current events, and those in Los Cabos or Cancún might as well be living on Jupiter. That this thinking is neither true nor wise can be confirmed by actually talking to people. But that's not usually a priority with the bottom-line types . . .
SPEAKING OF ENGLISH. A recent Mitofsky poll tells us that 9% of Mexicans speak a second language, which in 86% of the cases is English. That translates to more than 8 million additional potential readers of a quality English-language newspaper in Mexico, should one ever emerge. (French, by the way, is second, spoken by 2% of the 9% who have two languages, which doesn't work out to be a heck of a lot of people.) Of those who speak English as a second language, 4% say they speak or read it well, and 7% "regular." Even those low figures may be inflated, since they depend on the word of the subjects. People tend to exaggerate their proficiency in languages other than their own. "I speak a little English" or, from the other side, "I speak a little Spanish," is akin to "The check is in the mail" on the accuracy meter, unless you interpret "a little" much more literally than the speaker wants you to. The poll seems to define second language as something other than Spanish. Thus the word "Náhuatl" doesn't turn up in a search of the study document. But we know there are hundreds of thousands of speakers of indigenous languages who also speak Spanish — as a second language.
WHO'LL GET IT? We've all been assuming that the new incarnation of The News, as of now slated for a September resurrection, will serve readers of English across the nation. All indications, though, point to a strictly Mexico City circulation. Remember, the new News won't have Novedades to piggyback on for distribution. But the non-national availability, if that turns out to be the case, may also reflect a business bias I've heard often over the years. The bias, essentially, is that bringing a capital-based English-language paper to the provinces is a waste of time and effort. San Miguel residents, the thinking goes, are bohemians who don't buy much. Anglophones in Oaxaca are a bunch of hippies who buy even less. Expats in Ajijic and Lake Chapala are isolationists who don't want to read about current events, and those in Los Cabos or Cancún might as well be living on Jupiter. That this thinking is neither true nor wise can be confirmed by actually talking to people. But that's not usually a priority with the bottom-line types . . .
SPEAKING OF ENGLISH. A recent Mitofsky poll tells us that 9% of Mexicans speak a second language, which in 86% of the cases is English. That translates to more than 8 million additional potential readers of a quality English-language newspaper in Mexico, should one ever emerge. (French, by the way, is second, spoken by 2% of the 9% who have two languages, which doesn't work out to be a heck of a lot of people.) Of those who speak English as a second language, 4% say they speak or read it well, and 7% "regular." Even those low figures may be inflated, since they depend on the word of the subjects. People tend to exaggerate their proficiency in languages other than their own. "I speak a little English" or, from the other side, "I speak a little Spanish," is akin to "The check is in the mail" on the accuracy meter, unless you interpret "a little" much more literally than the speaker wants you to. The poll seems to define second language as something other than Spanish. Thus the word "Náhuatl" doesn't turn up in a search of the study document. But we know there are hundreds of thousands of speakers of indigenous languages who also speak Spanish — as a second language.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Random Readings Redux: Bulldozing
Still on vacation, but here's a ditty from last year that might help you win a few bar bets. For example, which country -- Mexico or the United States -- has a higher percentage of illegals living in the other? And which is more intolerant of foreigners working within its boundaries?
Almanaque México-Estados Unidos
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Fondo de Cultura Económica (2005)
A U.S.-Mexico almanac that sets a few records straight
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
As almanacs go, Sergio Aguayo’s one-man effort runs a few hundred agate-type pages behind the CIA World Fact Book, and falls as many witticisms shy of Poor Richard’s. But as a corrective to the ignorance-driven nonsense that dominates so much casual conversation about the United States and Mexico, “Almanaque México Estados Unidos” is nothing short of heroic. Aguayo has put together 310 pages of facts and data about both countries, much of it presented in comparative terms and all of it communicated in an easy-to-follow format.
Its aim is noble: a better cross-border understanding.
Readers of this almanac (and, yes, you really can “read” this one, the cumulative effect of the binational information serving as something like a story arc with character development) will find themselves not just learning what they didn’t know, but also unlearning what they thought they knew.
To wit: Mexico can claim two Nobel Prizes — Octavio Paz in 1990 for literature. And the other? No, it’s not Mario Molina for chemistry in 1995; he accepted the award with his U.S. passport, Aguayo tells us on page 15. In 1982, Alfonso García Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament.
The longest river in Mexico, it turns out, is also one of the longest in the United States — the Rio Bravo/Grande (pg. 12). And in the United States? The Missouri, at 4,087 kilometers. (Admit it, you thought it was the Mississippi. So did I.)
Aguayo, a weekly EL UNIVERSAL columnist and frequent television commentator, teaches foreign relations at Mexico City’s Colegio de México. As a prominent pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, he was one of the first to see the merits in accepting the solidarity of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations, at a time when they were still mostly seen as buttinskis. He is, most agree, one of the good guys.
Hence this book. Aguayo begins his introduction with a banal truism — “The relationship between Mexico and the United States has a vital importance for both countries” — and follows up with an understatement: “In spite of that, myths and stereotypes proliferate that must be fought with reliable facts.”
I’m not sure that facts alone will get the job done; they seldom seem to get in the way of a confirmed bigot or know-it-all. But they’re a good starting point, and Aguayo seems to have selected many of his facts for their ability to upset apple carts.
An early section of the almanac consists of polling information on Mexican and U.S. attitudes about themselves and each other. While national newspapers here tell us that the United States is populated almost exclusively of xenophobes who resent the presence of Mexican workers in their country, the information on page 22 of the almanac tells us something else.
While 80 percent of Mexicans believe that scarce Mexican jobs should go to nationals rather than immigrants, less than half (49 percent) of Americans believe that. As Aguayo puts it in one of the short explanatory commentaries he scatters throughout the book, “In Mexico, anti-foreigner sentiment imbues society with intolerance. Americans, on the other hand, are more open to diversity.”
Stereotypes are bulldozed down by facts throughout the book.
Example: Mexico spends not that much less on education as a percentage of GDP as does the United States (5.9 to 7.3) though with considerably inferior results, as Aguayo points out (pg. 263). Another example: The two populations place virtually equal importance on the family with 95 percent of Americans saying it’s “very important” compared to 97 percent of Mexicans (pg. 31).
Aguayo also sees stereotype-busting in what he calls “surprising” figures revealing much more emphasis on the importance of hard work in Mexico than in the United States (pg. 33). “These numbers go against the myth of the Mexican with his sombrero and serape dozing as he leans against a nopal cactus,” he writes.
Actually, that particular stereotype strikes me as too outdated to need busting. In the United States, at least, all but the most off-the-wall extremists seem to recognize the Mexican’s capacity for hard work.
More revealing to me was the data on attitudes toward work itself. Workers in both countries care most about good pay, but it’s only the U.S. side of the ledger that ranks high in importance such job aspects as potential for “achievement” and “interesting work.” Demanding a rewarding, self-fulfilling job, it seems, is a luxury of the richer nations.
Some of the revelations are curious. The percentage of Mexicans who “profess a religion” is higher than the percentage of Mexicans who consider themselves religious (pg. 34), which probably tells us something about the power of a dominant, even if unofficial, Church. And speaking of religion, in the Voltaire-lived-in-vain category we find that a full three quarters of folks in both countries believe there’s a hell. And they’re not referring to the Periférico in the early evening.
The sections on the economies, the militaries, and education are studies in inequality. The Harvard University library, for example, has more than three times the volumes as the top 10 Mexican higher education institutions combined. But it’s worth knowing that the collection at Aguayo’s Colegio de Mexico, a relatively small public university, has one of the best collections in Latin America, with 780,000 volumes (pg. 267).
Shall we talk about the difference in military spending? No need to, but we can assume this is an area where Mexico is proud to lag far behind.
Some of the eye-popping differences between the two nations are less related to the well-known economic disparity. Child-raising is one. In the U.S. independence is considered desirable in children, but not in Mexico (pg. 36). Mexicans, however, value obedience in their children twice as much as Americans. (This is a good time to point out, though Aguayo doesn’t, that this kind of poll information by nature homogenizes varying points of view. Don’t hold anybody in either country to what surveys say they think.)
A shocking instance of cross-border inequality is the prison population. In 2000, there were 633 U.S. citizens in Mexican jails. At about the same time, there were more than 34,000 Mexicans in U.S. jails. Even given the 10-1 difference in immigrant population, that proportion is out of whack by some 600 percent. What’s going on? Here I wish Aguayo’s commentary were expanded. The relatively tiny number of U.S. prisoners in Mexico is due, he writes, “to the efforts that Washington makes to bring its citizens home to carry out their sentences in U.S. prisons.” I can’t help thinking there’s more to the disparity than that.
Any hope of clearing up the ongoing mystery of exactly (or even approximately) how many U.S. citizens live in Mexico is dashed on page 188. “The number is unknown,” Aguayo writes bluntly. We get a U.S. State Department figure of 1,036,300 U.S. citizens “in” Mexico in 2002. INEGI, the Mexican government’s statistics bureau, puts the number at 342,000. But the National Migration Institute issues only a few hundred declarations of landed immigrant status to Americans each year.
The implication is all too obvious. “(U.S. citizens) stay here to live without obtaining the migratory status called for by Mexican laws,” writes Aguayo. “In other words, we’re looking at undocumented U.S. citizens living in Mexico.”
Keep that little tidbit handy for your next discussion of the “crisis” of illegal immigrants.
The almanac isn’t available in English, but even if your Spanish is limited you’ll get plenty out of it. Most of the book consists of names and numbers anyway. Plus you get so much contact information — phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web sites for hundreds of government and non-government organizations in both countries — that it’s worth the 250 or so pesos for the instant rolodex alone.
Almanaque México-Estados Unidos
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Fondo de Cultura Económica (2005)
A U.S.-Mexico almanac that sets a few records straight
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
As almanacs go, Sergio Aguayo’s one-man effort runs a few hundred agate-type pages behind the CIA World Fact Book, and falls as many witticisms shy of Poor Richard’s. But as a corrective to the ignorance-driven nonsense that dominates so much casual conversation about the United States and Mexico, “Almanaque México Estados Unidos” is nothing short of heroic. Aguayo has put together 310 pages of facts and data about both countries, much of it presented in comparative terms and all of it communicated in an easy-to-follow format.
Its aim is noble: a better cross-border understanding.
Readers of this almanac (and, yes, you really can “read” this one, the cumulative effect of the binational information serving as something like a story arc with character development) will find themselves not just learning what they didn’t know, but also unlearning what they thought they knew.
To wit: Mexico can claim two Nobel Prizes — Octavio Paz in 1990 for literature. And the other? No, it’s not Mario Molina for chemistry in 1995; he accepted the award with his U.S. passport, Aguayo tells us on page 15. In 1982, Alfonso García Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament.
The longest river in Mexico, it turns out, is also one of the longest in the United States — the Rio Bravo/Grande (pg. 12). And in the United States? The Missouri, at 4,087 kilometers. (Admit it, you thought it was the Mississippi. So did I.)
Aguayo, a weekly EL UNIVERSAL columnist and frequent television commentator, teaches foreign relations at Mexico City’s Colegio de México. As a prominent pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, he was one of the first to see the merits in accepting the solidarity of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations, at a time when they were still mostly seen as buttinskis. He is, most agree, one of the good guys.
Hence this book. Aguayo begins his introduction with a banal truism — “The relationship between Mexico and the United States has a vital importance for both countries” — and follows up with an understatement: “In spite of that, myths and stereotypes proliferate that must be fought with reliable facts.”
I’m not sure that facts alone will get the job done; they seldom seem to get in the way of a confirmed bigot or know-it-all. But they’re a good starting point, and Aguayo seems to have selected many of his facts for their ability to upset apple carts.
An early section of the almanac consists of polling information on Mexican and U.S. attitudes about themselves and each other. While national newspapers here tell us that the United States is populated almost exclusively of xenophobes who resent the presence of Mexican workers in their country, the information on page 22 of the almanac tells us something else.
While 80 percent of Mexicans believe that scarce Mexican jobs should go to nationals rather than immigrants, less than half (49 percent) of Americans believe that. As Aguayo puts it in one of the short explanatory commentaries he scatters throughout the book, “In Mexico, anti-foreigner sentiment imbues society with intolerance. Americans, on the other hand, are more open to diversity.”
Stereotypes are bulldozed down by facts throughout the book.
Example: Mexico spends not that much less on education as a percentage of GDP as does the United States (5.9 to 7.3) though with considerably inferior results, as Aguayo points out (pg. 263). Another example: The two populations place virtually equal importance on the family with 95 percent of Americans saying it’s “very important” compared to 97 percent of Mexicans (pg. 31).
Aguayo also sees stereotype-busting in what he calls “surprising” figures revealing much more emphasis on the importance of hard work in Mexico than in the United States (pg. 33). “These numbers go against the myth of the Mexican with his sombrero and serape dozing as he leans against a nopal cactus,” he writes.
Actually, that particular stereotype strikes me as too outdated to need busting. In the United States, at least, all but the most off-the-wall extremists seem to recognize the Mexican’s capacity for hard work.
More revealing to me was the data on attitudes toward work itself. Workers in both countries care most about good pay, but it’s only the U.S. side of the ledger that ranks high in importance such job aspects as potential for “achievement” and “interesting work.” Demanding a rewarding, self-fulfilling job, it seems, is a luxury of the richer nations.
Some of the revelations are curious. The percentage of Mexicans who “profess a religion” is higher than the percentage of Mexicans who consider themselves religious (pg. 34), which probably tells us something about the power of a dominant, even if unofficial, Church. And speaking of religion, in the Voltaire-lived-in-vain category we find that a full three quarters of folks in both countries believe there’s a hell. And they’re not referring to the Periférico in the early evening.
The sections on the economies, the militaries, and education are studies in inequality. The Harvard University library, for example, has more than three times the volumes as the top 10 Mexican higher education institutions combined. But it’s worth knowing that the collection at Aguayo’s Colegio de Mexico, a relatively small public university, has one of the best collections in Latin America, with 780,000 volumes (pg. 267).
Shall we talk about the difference in military spending? No need to, but we can assume this is an area where Mexico is proud to lag far behind.
Some of the eye-popping differences between the two nations are less related to the well-known economic disparity. Child-raising is one. In the U.S. independence is considered desirable in children, but not in Mexico (pg. 36). Mexicans, however, value obedience in their children twice as much as Americans. (This is a good time to point out, though Aguayo doesn’t, that this kind of poll information by nature homogenizes varying points of view. Don’t hold anybody in either country to what surveys say they think.)
A shocking instance of cross-border inequality is the prison population. In 2000, there were 633 U.S. citizens in Mexican jails. At about the same time, there were more than 34,000 Mexicans in U.S. jails. Even given the 10-1 difference in immigrant population, that proportion is out of whack by some 600 percent. What’s going on? Here I wish Aguayo’s commentary were expanded. The relatively tiny number of U.S. prisoners in Mexico is due, he writes, “to the efforts that Washington makes to bring its citizens home to carry out their sentences in U.S. prisons.” I can’t help thinking there’s more to the disparity than that.
Any hope of clearing up the ongoing mystery of exactly (or even approximately) how many U.S. citizens live in Mexico is dashed on page 188. “The number is unknown,” Aguayo writes bluntly. We get a U.S. State Department figure of 1,036,300 U.S. citizens “in” Mexico in 2002. INEGI, the Mexican government’s statistics bureau, puts the number at 342,000. But the National Migration Institute issues only a few hundred declarations of landed immigrant status to Americans each year.
The implication is all too obvious. “(U.S. citizens) stay here to live without obtaining the migratory status called for by Mexican laws,” writes Aguayo. “In other words, we’re looking at undocumented U.S. citizens living in Mexico.”
Keep that little tidbit handy for your next discussion of the “crisis” of illegal immigrants.
The almanac isn’t available in English, but even if your Spanish is limited you’ll get plenty out of it. Most of the book consists of names and numbers anyway. Plus you get so much contact information — phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web sites for hundreds of government and non-government organizations in both countries — that it’s worth the 250 or so pesos for the instant rolodex alone.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Not The News: Counting crows
Andrés Manuel López Obrador attracted "hundreds of thousands" to the capital's Zócalo Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the disputed 2006 presidential election.
Or perhaps he only attracted "more than 100,000." Or maybe just "80,000." Or was it "tens of thousands"?
Depends on who's counting. The estimates above are from the Associated Press, La Jornada, New York Times and Reuters, respectively.
Which is right? I've covered dozens of these things, and my best conclusion is that nobody has ever had the slightest idea how many people are there.
I recognize three crowd sizes. A rally either a) fills the Zócalo, b) doesn't fill the Zócalo, or c) overfills the Zócalo, flooding the side streets.
Sometimes, though, the figures do tell you something. I'm thinking of the anti-desafuero event in 2005. Federal District (i.e. PRD) cops put the total at 1.3 million. The feds (i.e. PAN) officially said something like 130,000.
Other than the futility of counting, what did Sunday's event reveal?
It revealed that López Obrador wants to "make sure voters don't forget the election" (Chicago Tribune). It revealed that he is seeking to "reinvigorate his flagging anti-establishment movement" (New York Times). Or it revealed that he is trying "to light (a) fire under (his) movement" (AP).
Those could be three ways of saying the same thing. But Reuters, one of the more consistently AMLO-phobic foreign news services during the campaign, had a different take.
Under the headline "A year after defeat, Mexican leftist fades away," Reuters interprets the rally as indicating that AMLO was "reduced to political artifact Sunday." We know this, the Reuters writer tells us, because "ordinary Mexicans say the leftist former indigenous rights activist has dropped off the political map."
That would come as a surprise to the "one quarter of the population" from which "his movement draws support" (AP). But the press — including the Mexican press — pays attention to celebrity, not disaffected human beings, and especally not disaffected human beings who apparently are not "ordinary."
As news judgment has it, AMLO's no longer hot. President Calderón, on the other hand, has a 65 percent approval rating. Pretty much all the English-language papers pointed out that fab fact as part of their take on Sunday's story as an AMLO-vs-Calderón popularity contest.
None mentioned that a 65 percent approval rating for a Mexican president doesn't mean much. If memory serves, a typical approval rating used to be 100 percent.
Even Vicente Fox, a failed president if there ever was one, consistently polled 65 percent or higher — even during the last pathetic twitches of his sexenio last August.
And come to think of it, how many people came to Calderón's celebration Sunday of his big victory’s first birthday? Here all agree on the attendance figure — zero. Neither the president nor the PAN dared hold one.
But if the story from Sunday really is AMLO's reduction in rank to something less than a deuteragonist, as most of the press chose to play it, then it becomes interesting that in a non-national-election year a non-candidate who holds no office not of his own invention can fill the main square of the capital. Not bad for a has-been.
Could Al Gore have attracted tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) to any rally a year after his 2000 election defeat? He'd have been grateful if Tipper showed up, even though he had a stronger case than López Obrador — or at least a more widely accepted one — for having been robbed of the presidency.
AMLO isn't in the headlines because he isn't the president, no matter what he calls himself. He can't use the army to boost his ratings, or rush through pre-ordained pension legislation before the affected workers know what's going on.
You can call him an artifact. You can be turned off by his tactics. You can join a lot of PRD supporters who'd like to see the party take a different approach. But the part of Mexico that he represents — or used to represent, if you prefer — isn't going away.
The real story Sunday was about them, not him. Problem is, unless they block a street somewhere, they're under-covered news.
Or perhaps he only attracted "more than 100,000." Or maybe just "80,000." Or was it "tens of thousands"?
Depends on who's counting. The estimates above are from the Associated Press, La Jornada, New York Times and Reuters, respectively.
Which is right? I've covered dozens of these things, and my best conclusion is that nobody has ever had the slightest idea how many people are there.
I recognize three crowd sizes. A rally either a) fills the Zócalo, b) doesn't fill the Zócalo, or c) overfills the Zócalo, flooding the side streets.
Sometimes, though, the figures do tell you something. I'm thinking of the anti-desafuero event in 2005. Federal District (i.e. PRD) cops put the total at 1.3 million. The feds (i.e. PAN) officially said something like 130,000.
Other than the futility of counting, what did Sunday's event reveal?
It revealed that López Obrador wants to "make sure voters don't forget the election" (Chicago Tribune). It revealed that he is seeking to "reinvigorate his flagging anti-establishment movement" (New York Times). Or it revealed that he is trying "to light (a) fire under (his) movement" (AP).
Those could be three ways of saying the same thing. But Reuters, one of the more consistently AMLO-phobic foreign news services during the campaign, had a different take.
Under the headline "A year after defeat, Mexican leftist fades away," Reuters interprets the rally as indicating that AMLO was "reduced to political artifact Sunday." We know this, the Reuters writer tells us, because "ordinary Mexicans say the leftist former indigenous rights activist has dropped off the political map."
That would come as a surprise to the "one quarter of the population" from which "his movement draws support" (AP). But the press — including the Mexican press — pays attention to celebrity, not disaffected human beings, and especally not disaffected human beings who apparently are not "ordinary."
As news judgment has it, AMLO's no longer hot. President Calderón, on the other hand, has a 65 percent approval rating. Pretty much all the English-language papers pointed out that fab fact as part of their take on Sunday's story as an AMLO-vs-Calderón popularity contest.
None mentioned that a 65 percent approval rating for a Mexican president doesn't mean much. If memory serves, a typical approval rating used to be 100 percent.
Even Vicente Fox, a failed president if there ever was one, consistently polled 65 percent or higher — even during the last pathetic twitches of his sexenio last August.
And come to think of it, how many people came to Calderón's celebration Sunday of his big victory’s first birthday? Here all agree on the attendance figure — zero. Neither the president nor the PAN dared hold one.
But if the story from Sunday really is AMLO's reduction in rank to something less than a deuteragonist, as most of the press chose to play it, then it becomes interesting that in a non-national-election year a non-candidate who holds no office not of his own invention can fill the main square of the capital. Not bad for a has-been.
Could Al Gore have attracted tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) to any rally a year after his 2000 election defeat? He'd have been grateful if Tipper showed up, even though he had a stronger case than López Obrador — or at least a more widely accepted one — for having been robbed of the presidency.
AMLO isn't in the headlines because he isn't the president, no matter what he calls himself. He can't use the army to boost his ratings, or rush through pre-ordained pension legislation before the affected workers know what's going on.
You can call him an artifact. You can be turned off by his tactics. You can join a lot of PRD supporters who'd like to see the party take a different approach. But the part of Mexico that he represents — or used to represent, if you prefer — isn't going away.
The real story Sunday was about them, not him. Problem is, unless they block a street somewhere, they're under-covered news.
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